It’s a bit of a cheap shot—but on account of that Babylon the Great scripture we Witnesses are known to take such shots*—John Barr, the GB member until he died, related an amazing feat: a candidate who was rejected as a Jesuit for being too short. Whereupon, he memorized the entire Bible to prove his worthiness.

The truly amazing thing, John Barr related, was that after having done so, he still wanted to be a Jesuit.

As I recall it, the account was included in Barr’s talk at a District Convention. Such GB talks would often find their way into the Watchtower magazine within the year. When his did, the magazine dropped the line about still wanting to become a Jesuit. Instead, it skipped right over to the more milquetoast, “Surely, however, it is far more important to understand God’s Word than it is to memorize it.” It declined to take the ‘cheap shot’ that Barr could not resist.

The Watchtower paragraph, from the February 1, 1994 issue (pages 8-9):

“In the 17th century C.E., a Catholic man named Cornelius van der Steen sought to become a Jesuit but was rejected because he was too short. Says Manfred Barthel in his book The Jesuits​—History & Legend of the Society of Jesus: “The committee informed van der Steen that they were prepared to waive the height requirement, but only with the proviso that he would learn to recite the entire Bible by heart. The story would hardly be worth telling if van der Steen had not complied with this rather presumptuous request.” What effort it took to memorize the whole Bible! Surely, however, it is far more important to understand God’s Word than it is to memorize it.”

___ *As for ‘cheap shots,’ nothing is a more cardinal sin in Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eyes than obscuring Bible teachings. Examples are the teaching of trinity, which makes God incomprehensible, someone impossible to know. Another is the hellfire teaching, which makes him cruel, someone you would not want to know. The Jesuits were firmly in that category, never mind whatever good things they did.

******  The bookstore

Just over the Zoom Watchtower reader’s shoulder hangs the embroidered artwork—“Kindness Matters.” No surprise there. Kindness typified the man who coined the complete expression from which the snippet was taken. It was my favorite circuit overseer, long ago retired, who said, “Some things are black or white. But in all other things, do what is kind. Kindness matters.”

He died recently. Well into his nineties, he had been maintaining circuit overseer hours even in his old age. Perhaps he maintained them even in the nursing home he’d at last entered, for he was studying with one other resident and had seven attending Zoom meetings with him.

A man of empathy, intelligence, and unflinching honesty, he is mentioned several times in Tom Irregardless and Me, although only once by name. He is the only person of the book mentioned by name within his lifetime. Everyone else has been renamed, if not made up. His trademark expression, “just do the best you can” made him an unwavering source of refreshment, though there were a few hard-driving brothers who murmured their fear that some of the friends would “take advantage” and do nothing.

He is the brother who cut me off when I was carrying on about my wonderfulness—not carrying on per se, but decrying those not so wonderful, which amounts to the same thing. Here I was working with him in that city congregation—I worked with him a lot—and I started in about how some with growing families had left the gritty city for the cushier burbs, leaving the local congregation high and dry—but as for me and my household…” “You always do what is best for you family,” he interrupted.

One place he appears in the book unnamed, as “the retired circuit overseer,” is when we had him over for lunch after the public talk, along with some twenty-somethings. Iron sharpens iron, and so forth—that’s why we did it.

Presently, young Justin approached the fellow:

“So, how long were you in the circuit work?” he asked.

“Thirty years!” came the reply.

“Wow! You must really miss it.”

“Nope!” the C.O. shot back.

“Well . . . um . . . I mean . . . that is,” (this was not the answer he’d expected) “it must have been a big adjustment.”

“I adjusted that afternoon!”

“Look, I don’t want to sound unappreciative,” he told a friend later. “It’s just that a lot of the job is not my first choice. You know me, I’m an outdoors guy. (in his younger days, he’d worked on the railroad) And so what am I doing all day? I’m sitting in meetings! Still, Jehovah apparently has found a use for me, so I stay the course.”

It’s called counting the costs. It’s a good thing to do. Aren’t mid-life crises launched when people don’t count the costs, then are floored when the bill unexpectedly arrives? Be it family, job, responsibilities, goals in life: people go haywire for never having counted the costs. But if you blow off steam as you go, acknowledge this part is good, that part not so much, and adjust accordingly, either deciding to stay the present course or make modifications . . . well, I’ll trust those folks much more quickly than those who have never made introspection.

And Jehovah did have a use for him, apparently. In one of those training schools, where the traveling ministers instruct all the assembled elders and servants, I noticed that the weightiest parts were invariably assigned to him.

He also appears in the chapter ‘The Regional Convention’ in which I speak of how before there were videos, I was assigned a talk and had to choose two pillars of the faith (I chose Howie and Jake) to interview.

We worked several weeks and ran our interview past the circuit overseer in rehearsal. He was ecstatic: “Oh, my! What a wonderful job! How hard you brothers have worked! This is exactly what the organization is looking for. The hours and hours you must have spent! How wonderful that . . . ” he gushed on and on.

“Only,” I looked up from my humble head nod, “a tiny bit on this point here . . . I wonder if that could be tweaked just a little, not much. Just a little, to make it line up even more with what the slave is conveying.”

“Sure,” I replied uneasily, “we could adjust that.”

“Yes, I think that will go a little smoother. Everything else you brothers have worked on (you’ve worked so hard!) is fine. Just fine . . . except . . . this small bit here . . . I’m just thinking . . . we have to consider everyone in the audience . . . And actually . . . I wonder if anyone could possibly miss the point of this line. Hmm. Maybe you could . . . ”

By the time he was done, there was nothing left! In a situation like this, there is only one thing a brother can say, and I said it: “Thank you, Brother Hartman, for your counsel.” Jake interjected: “What do you mean, ‘thank you?’ He messed it all up!” But we worked the part over, and when it was presented at the convention, it fit better. It was more integrated into the overall theme.

Sometime after I wrote the book, I sent him that chapter. Never one to be anything but frank, he replied that it “didn’t make much sense to him,” a comment especially worrisome to me since he “still thought he had all his marbles,” an he went on to ask about my family. So I said I could take his name out of the ebook for a substitute. But he said he really didn’t care at this point, so I left it as is. I probably should have foreseen it. These are men very much in the tradition of anonymity, bringing attention to God, not the person serving him, same as everything printed by the earthly organization is written anonymously.

Or maybe he thought the book stunk. If so he didn’t say so. It is better for the self-esteem to stick with the first possibility.

******  The bookstore

See Part 1 and Part 2) Part 3 Part 4

The former guard regales his tablemates with how he became a disciple. ‘With Jehovah’s help and the patience of these good people [pass the Bible chips, please] I was baptized before the start of the great tribulation.’

Can you believe it?—Ensconced in his Zoom couch, Oscar Oxgoad appends to the remark, “but it really sucked for those who were only in the middle of their baptism questions!"

What is wrong with him? I mean, you can go there, but why? Think it’s easy writing a Bible drama? It’s not. If you’re content to let your Moses pop Pharaoh in the nose and get the girl it is but we don’t do that. You have to stick to script. It makes for some clunky dialogue now and then, but you have to stick to script. If there’s one thing we know about Jehovah’s people, it is that they will stick to script. 

HQ is locked into that big book they follow. “Baptism, which corresponds to [the ark, in which you had to be on it to survive]  is also now saving you,” says 1 Peter 3:21. They can’t just blow past that verse as though it was nothing. If any of them harbor secret thoughts that God will go all-softy at the last moment like in Nineveh they must keep that to themselves.

It is a consequence of taking ‘knowledge by revelation’—not personal revelation but the revelation coming from God’s communication with us, the Bible. They can’t go ‘empirical evidence’ that God has gone all-softy in the past so maybe he will this time too. They can’t tell him what to do. It’s all very nice to say when individually queried about whether this or that person will make it through Armegeddon, “Well, I’m not Jesus and I don’t know,” but in your video you have to be bound by 1 Peter.

It’s a little like when Bro Morris related at the Atlanta Regional how he desperately needed to have cash on hand by a certain date, that such cash was contingent on the sale of his house, and said house wasn’t selling. “It’s getting a little tight, here,” he related how he had looked heavenward, but then added, “He’s God. He can do what he likes.” Per this theory, God apparently gave him a break, for it did sell at the last second. Relieved, Morris streamlined a few procedures. The buyer commented, ‘It isn’t usually done that way,’ and he retorted, ‘It is today.’

Same here. God gave those Ninevites a pass when they shaped up with seconds to go, but you can’t tell him he must repeat the procedure. He’s God. He can do what he likes and he doesn’t spill on every little thing.

Oscar Oxgoad giving me a hard time over this! And to think his brother Ozzie gives me a hard time the other way! “In my opinion, things will have to reach a point where world powers (or whoever) is seconds away from pushing the nuclear button, and at that point Jehovah will step in to prevent the earth from blowing up,” he says.

Oh yeah, I answered. And the clock will read 666 instead of 007 and the big fried thug will be the one with his horns stuck in the bars. Background music yet to be determined. An original song yet to be composed, no doubt.

(Photo: Den Haag Louwman Museum) 

To be continued: 

******  The bookstore

(See Part 1 and Part 2)

Mmm, this counsel is delicious! Nancy, you really must tell me your recipe!

I don’t have to. You have it in your recipe book already, same as it is in mine! It’s in the Taste and See Psalms section. It’s so good!

Yum—pass the Bible sandwiches please. I’ll have another.

We sure have had fine conversation along with some surprises. Here is Tim the guard, come into the truth because the guard at Acts 16:25 came into the truth when he heard Paul and Silas sing. And what a delight to hear from Mefibberpest, that faithful man of old who no one can pronounce his name! I think we have time for one more experience. Is there anyone else here who cleared up a misundstanding to make peace with a brother? Connery?

I faced a trial like that, brother. Truetom said something about me online that I thought was an insult. He is a brother who blogs on the internet.

A blogger. Oh my. What happened?

Well, I started to follow him on Twitter. After he found out, he began referring to me as “that elder, the worst speaker in the circuit, possibly the world, who follows me on Twitter so I try to make it worth his while.”  I was offended. It’s not true.

No, I would say not, Connery. The world is a very big place. Did you report him to the elders?

No. I decided to do like Jesus said at Matthew 18:15, that if you think your brother has committed a sin, you go and talk to him about it first. So I approached him.

What excuse did he offer?

He said he thought I was okay with it because I had said I was. He also said he tries to keep a virtual presence in the virtual neighborhood the same as someone keeps a physical presence in their physical neighborhood. That way he can interact with online neighbors, just like people interact with physical neighbors, and sometimes get to put in a good word for God.

Hmm. Well, he seems to mean well, but . . . 

He also said he likes to use humor, even about himself, because people like humor and he wants to reach them. But I told him not everyone has a sense of humor so he should stop. 

I like your reasoning. Did you win him over?

I thought I did. But then overnight—I’m not saying it was him—someone defaced my truck. See?

I like it that you don’t jump to conclusions, brother. That’s maturity at work. I don’t think he would do that. Truetom is a little bit ‘out there,’ but he’s basically a good guy.

(Photo: Unknown. Meme pics on social media are common property, so far as I know. If it’s yours, claim it.)

To be continued…here.

******  The bookstore

What Lett said was: 

“Now, if we think about it, we're not born as friends of God because we're born as sinful offspring of Adam. Actually, when we think about it, we're born as enemies of God. Sometimes you'll hear people say of a little baby, ‘Look at that little angel,’ but more accurate would be to say, ‘Look at that little enemy of God.’ Now, of course we love that little baby and it's now not hopeless because our loving creator has made reconciliation with him within the reach of everyone. We can become a good friend of God and that close relationship with Jehovah will become our most valuable possession.”

Notice how he twice said, ‘when we think about it?’ You have to do that—think about things. You don’t just parrot sound bites to make people you don’t like look bad. O, you spiteful fellow, who quotes scripture by the bushel basket but never lays hold on the one that applies, besides the reference to Adam in Genesis, the place to focus is here:

“…through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned—.” Romans 5:12

“when we were enemies we became reconciled to God through the death of his Son,” by exercising faith in him, which a baby cannot yet do, and thus is temporarily ‘grandfathered’ via the faith of it’s parents. (vs 10)

Now, as for Bro Lett, for a guy who will quote Job 12:11, “Does not the ear test out words As the tongue tastes food?” you’d almost think he’d test them out a little more before letting loose with a phrase that every evil cherry picker will use to “distort the right ways of Jehovah.”

But I hate to think what Vomodog would have done to Jesus for his, ‘Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and I will resurrect him on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.’ John 6:54-55

Vomodog taunted, “Please tell me if he is truly adhering to and following Christ as a model.”

Taking into consideration that passage in John, I would say Lett is supremely adhering to and following Christ as a model, in fact, more so than any of the other HQ staff.

Imagine: what sort of vile person would comb through a convention in which every talk explores the theme verse (Psalm 34:14) ‘Seek peace and pursue it’ to find and exploit a faux pas?

Gif: Crying baby gifs/ tenor

It may be just an example of God ‘laughing at the wisdom of this systems’s wise ones,’ proof that his anointed are, as in the first century, seldom of ‘noble birth,’ nor ‘wise,’ but decidedly ‘uneducated and ordinary.’

I’ll take substance over style any day. Turn on the TV and you can see endless people whose ‘style’ is impeccable. Among them are some of the stupidest people whom God ever let roam the earth.

******  The bookstore

Our chum watched the video of Olivia being mocked by classmates. It would never happen that way, she said.  Why not? we asked. Things aren’t that bad?

They wouldn’t ridicule her like that. They’d beat her up in the bathroom instead, she said.

I do remember being guest at the home of some friends where the daughter matter-of-factly spoke of how at the school she used to attend girls would attack each other with box-cutters. They liked to sneak up on unsuspecting ones, preferring to disfigure the face.

We had no idea.

Not to say this would happen everywhere.. I think it would not. We once lived where there was a gritty school system. Long ago, I wrote of how the departing school superintendent was interviewed by local media about his tenure. This fellow was hailed as a superstar when he arrived, one sure to raise the sinking ship. He left in short order for greener pastures.

He answered his interviewer with a bewildering set of buzzwords. Not to fear, I wrote. The skilled interpreter of ‘Educatese’ has no difficulty comprehending the underlying message: Don’t expect any changes in your lifetime.

It was prophetic. Here we are decades later and there have been no changes. Well—that’s not technically correct. Things have gotten worse.  The SEC recently launched an investigation into that District’s internal finances. How often does THAT happen? And the education of the kids? Sigh…Fuhgeddaboudit.

We didn’t want to leave the area at the time, even though we have since. We figured we’d homeschool the kids. No regrets, though it does put you out of sync with the agencies. Even before school, we went through all the Glenn Doman number cards with our babies, I am convinced to good effect—and even in the event it was not it was fun and took almost no time.

At one point, following a Doman cue, we asked our infant to pick up the placard that was 57, as opposed to 56 and 58, dots all mixed up with no underlying pattern—the number written on the back so you would know. Instantly he did. But Doman said you can’t do it twice; infants get bored and they will not do it for show. Sure enough, when we tried again, he would not.

Coincidence? Dunno. It was a one out of three chance, after all, so coincidence is certainly possible.  But he reached for it instantly, with no hesitation at all.

The point was, in building your baby’s ‘better’ brain (Yikes!—Building Back Better) that if you see 3 or 4 cows in the field you instantly read them for their true number, but at some point you must start counting, 1…2…3…4…5…. The idea with the flash cards for an infant’s rapidly expanding brain was that you could push way up that point at which you had to start counting; that it could take in 56 at a glance. Doman’s flash cards went up to 100. 

Davey-the-Kid went after that system with an almost missionary zeal that embarrassed him later. He was there, all right, at that pricey weeklong seminar in Philly (where I wan’t). ‘How’s field service?’ Ernie asked him over the phone but he replied he hadn’t gone out in service. “How’s the meetings?” Ernie asked but he replied he hadn’t been to any. “Did you pray?” Ernie said in mock exasperation.

We’re talking about the guy who installed a 3 foot swimming pool in his heated basement so he could teach his baby to swim, another thing that was all the rage. Davey passed away some years ago, but his son is still with us. Come to think of it, if you asked me whether or not the kid can swim, I’d draw a blank.

******  The bookstore

We took supper at a Red Robin after the first day of the “Love Never Fails” Regional Convention in Wilkes-Barre. A child at the table just behind me, about 5 years of age (and not one of ours), began raising a horrible ruckus, screaming at the top of his lungs. His mother took him out, but when she returned, he started up anew. I turned around and asked the parents if everything was okay.

I admit that I was looking for signs of endangerment. Maybe one “parent” or the other would look shifty. Maybe the child would act as though they were not his parents. This was not like when my own teenager dragged me through a trendy clothing boutique and I cried, “Help! Help! You are not my daughter!” Here I thought it might be serious. It is a sign of the times that I should think this, but I saw nothing alarming.

There was a time not so long ago when most parents would respond in a certain way to such a tantrum, but that way is likely to land them in jail today. Jehovah’s Witnesses work with many refugee groups. They meet ones whose flight has turned their lives upside-down, and one of the most bewildering things the newcomers confront is that child-rearing customs that were absolutely routine and unremarkable back home are taboo in their new home. Do not misunderstand. I make no argument for their return. That said, it is by no means clear that today’s children are better adjusted for their disappearance.

My turning around put the parents even more on notice that they were disrupting the entire restaurant. They could hardly have not known it before, but here was a fresh reminder. The father became heated, threatening no television for an entire week and such things. Upon leaving, I said to him: “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been there. They’re kids. It happens.”

How did we come to be in Wilkes-Barre that year of 2019? For decades, those of my faith in the Upstate New York area have taken in their annual regional convention at Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena. But new management signaled new policies. “It’s not just money,” I was told, though it was that and quite a bit of it. It is also heightened security measures (another sign of the times) because no city wants to be the site of the next terrorist attack. They might have thought they had the Witnesses over a barrel because where else are they going to go at the last minute? But it isn’t easy to get the Witnesses over a barrel. With three weeks to go, when it became clear that prior verbal agreements would not be renewed, Jehovah’s Witnesses canceled that convention. They weren’t the only ones. Disney on Ice and Monster Truck Rally also canceled events that summer.

Days later came the announcement that the show would go on, something that had never been in doubt, but it would be 200 miles away in Wilkes-Barre. We made lodging arrangements and joined the excitement that most of the brotherhood accepts as a matter of routine—it is the luck of the draw if the Convention happens to be in your back yard as it had been in ours for the longest time.

The summer regional convention, in our back yard for the longest time

We settled in for what would be, according to the event program, “three days of music-video presentations, prayers, songs, addresses, symposiums, and dramatic readings from the Bible.” That year Phoenix was the keynote city. From the Convention Center at Chase Field, packed to near 40,000-seat capacity, certain highlights comprising about ten percent of the total were streamed to “daughter” conventions, Wilkes-Barre being one of them.

Witnesses are always on the alert for good press during these times. One writer for azcentral.com called Witnesses the foot soldiers of modern Christianity, the hallmark of wholesomeness, to whom he applied the same Matthew 7:70 scripture he also applied to his own LDS Church: “. . . by their fruits ye shall know them. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” You can know a people by how they conduct themselves, is the idea.

But another writer appeared to regard the attendants as wardens and thought attendees were all brainwashed. “Attendees listened rapturously,” she observed derisively, as though they should have been expected to nod off. In fact, some of them do nod off after lunch on long afternoons—it is one of those ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ situations—and it was worse before the days of efficient air conditioning. Don’t attendees of concerts or rallies also listen rapturously? Why come if you will not?

She felt “conspicuous in pants.” Well—whose fault is that? When I invite people to conventions, I say: “You are perfectly welcome to come just as you are. But if you don’t have one of these (I flip my tie), everyone will assume you are a visitor, and they may just come to preach to you.” It’s a heads-up that brings a smile. And the “wardens,” whom anyone else would call attendants, are indeed attentive. That terrorist concern of Rochester management is not lost upon them. After a kick-off meeting of attendant volunteers, the first bit of preparation was, “That’s the last time you will ever close your eyes during public prayer again.” Mostly though, they just expedite traffic flow and seating.

Then there was one review I especially treasured because it neither gushed with praise nor signaled disapproval, but merely openness and curiosity. The fellow wrote, “Aside from the occasional door-to-door visits and that one time, which I still feel guilty about, when my brother drenched some evangelists with water balloons from our second-story bedroom window, I had never really met a Jehovah’s Witness.” (It took me two trips to the dry cleaners to get those water stains out of my suit.) He didn’t fall upon his face and do a Zechariah 8:23—'We will go with you people, for we have heard that God is with you people’—but considering his non-religious reporter background, I’ll take what he did write and thank him for it. You don’t have to quibble over every little thing.

Stadium and hospitality personnel often cannot praise JWs enough, rarely encountering such orderly and pleasant people. A reporter in Miami wishes that the Marlins could fill their own stadium to capacity as have Jehovah’s Witnesses. A shock jock in Rochester a few years back waxed ecstatic over Witnesses when he found that they categorically reject violence. “These are my people!” he gushed on air. So much was he carried away with the Witnesses brotherhood—brother this and brother that—that he even mentioned their persecution at the hands of Brother Hitler before correcting himself. Another stadium is said to accept as payment-in-full the thorough annual scouring that the Witnesses give their facility.

The public address of that Love Never Fails Convention explored a truth as self-evident as the truths Thomas Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence. In this case, it is that all instances of injustice occur and are cultivated due to a lack of love. That being so, and obvious, the question becomes: “Just who will teach love?” Will it be the university? That is not its job. It focuses on training the intellect, with the apparent assumption that moral qualities such as love will take care of themselves. As even the sloppiest purview of world headlines reveals, they do not. So who will teach it? Will it be agencies that are guided in training from the university that does not teach it? Is the quality so innate that it does not need to be taught? Again, a review of news headlines reveals the fallacy of such a notion. So who?

Training that takes its cue from humankind’s Creator will play that role. “God is love,” states 1 John 4:8. Publicizing that truth is a “treasure,” slightly dampened but also made more real because it is a treasure carried in “earthen vessels”—that is, the flawed humans that are us, just as Paul states in 2 Corinthians 4:7.

Later in the program, there was streamed the Cherokee man who grew up embittered because the white man had stolen the lands of his people. He was embittered anew when he was required to fight their war in Vietnam. When his wife began studying with two Witness women, he was sullen and unwelcoming—the last thing he wanted was the religion of the white man. When she reached the point of wanting to be baptized, he declared that he would not come. When asked who would watch his baby during the baptism, he figured that maybe he should come on that account. There, he observed the atmosphere for four days and his already softened attitude toward the Witnesses softened further.

I took a great many notes with the intent to write them up into a post or two that never materialized. Alas, they were crowded out by too many other things to do. However, when specifically asked, “What did you learn that was new at the 2019 Love Never Fails Regional Convention?”—trust me on this—he did not want anything boiler-plate, so I gave him what was not boiler-plate:

What I learned at the 2019 ‘Love Never Fails’ Regional Convention was that Brother Herd, who may not even know what political correctness is, will never reprove me for fat-shaming. He was the Governing Body keynote speaker streamed in from Phoenix. Establishing the point that it is the heart that matters, Brother Herd posed the quandary of marrying the woman—an excellent catch—with a heart of pure gold, even though she “clocks in at 200 pounds.” Is this fellow a diplomat or what?

Everybody loves Brother Herd—maybe even more so than Brother Lett, whom some secretly fear may be too over the top in mannerisms. Herd has to be the humblest man on earth. How can he not be? Born to a father, a mule-driver, in his old age, one of 8 or 9 children, he said at the convention that for the longest time he thought that “a chicken only had a neck and a back because that’s all he ever got.”

Outsiders will never ever ever get it about how such a man can become one of the Governing Body, but it harkens back to something I once posted about how that body is Plato’s dream come true: a monarchy type of governing in which the members are selected by merit, not by family line. The prerequisite modest, non-materialistic, not power hungry—such persons do exist, but the values of this world are such that they can never rise to the top. In the Witness organization, however, they can and do rise to the top—and part of their very qualifications is that they do not regard themselves as rising to the top, but only displaying a willingness to serve.

At any rate, I got a lot of mileage out of Herd when some opposer posted footage of him shaking hands with well-wishers at the airport and tried to spin it that the rank and file make him an object of worship and that he eats it all up. Anyone who knows the slightest thing about the man knows that he practically scowls at the attention, but what can he do? There they are. They love him. He loves them, so he shakes everyone’s hand. “Imagine: Who would be so nasty and petty to begrudge an old man acknowledging the well-wishing of friends?” I tweeted. It was one of my most liked tweets of all time.

He is really not even a good speaker, Sam Herd isn’t, but he is such a captivating storyteller that it doesn’t matter. His stories are so down-to-earth, so human, so involved in the day-to-day of life—very much like Jesus’ illustrations—so connected with all that is real about life, that he doesn’t have to spin erudite talks; his stories are such that everyone grasps the moral that he nowhere explicitly states. He appears in Tom Irregardless and Me as the title for chapter 2 and chapter 18. How often does that happen? He had given a talk so humble, yet so profound, that I used it to bookend the entire work.

“One thing is clear about jw.org,” a local brother said. “They don’t use paid actors.” No, they don’t. It’s a little like Anthony Morris introducing himself another year at the Atlanta convention, also streamed to different locations. “Dad, what’s a redneck?” his boys had asked him long ago on a trip down south. “You’ll know them when you see them,” he had replied. But he must have thought he had gone too far, for in a later address he spoke of the “gentle folk-wisdom of the South.” Rise, for these guys too are human.

You will never find people as unvarnished and real as are members of the Governing Body. Do not highlight people’s strengths. Highlight their weaknesses, though not in a fault-finding way, because in those weaknesses can be found God’s strength. If brilliant people carry out brilliant things—well, it is easy to see why. But if decidedly non-brilliant people carry out those things, it is not so easy to see why and the credit goes to God. Three times the apostle Paul pleaded with God to remove a weakness. ‘Nothing doing, God replied. I look better when you are a clod,’ the gist of 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.

The Wilkes-Barre convention site is plainly visible from Interstate 81, the spine running from New York to Tennessee. Just look to your right and there it is. Jehovah’s Witnesses have good relations with management and had already strung 4 or 5 conventions there back-to-back. Just throw in another two to care for the displaced New Yorkers.

It is also private property which means the dozen or so protestors eager to debate with someone are thwarted. It’s almost a tradition I miss, a ridiculous little pageant that plays out each year. Seldom do our people even look their way, often entering a human corridor so as to be unmolested, a circumstance the protestors interpret as brainwashing. There’s a yo-yo in a devil’s suit who shows up each year, pretending to be waving his disciples into the auditorium. Sheesh! Say what you will about Jehovah’s Witnesses—perhaps you’re not crazy about their visits, but they will never show up at your door dressed in a devil suit.

Even the cops have become fed up, threatening arrest when they try to physically obstruct entrance. “Why don’t you just pop them one?” one of them asked a Rochester attendant, so said the concluding speaker. One year one of them brought a small child who soon had to go to the bathroom. Her mom said she’d just have to hold it. You know how children squirm when they have to go to the bathroom. Presently an attendant said they both could enter and use one of ours. The mother forbade it! She relented only after a police officer said a refusal might constitute child abuse. Thereupon, she left her protest sign with a friend—no, we didn’t offer to guard it for her, there are limits—and ventured into the fearsome building.

But as stated, none of that happened on Wilkes-Barre private property. I parked in the lot, strode into the facility, and nobody at all had anything to say about it save for some friends who were glad to see me.

(From the book: Go Where Tom Goes)

For years I ignored the daily text. I didn’t oppose it. I just focused on other things. It was sort of bite-sized, too insubstantial to make such a fuss over, or so it seemed.

This avoidance did not change even when I was assigned the text at a convention. “You know that time when people read the back of the breakfast cereal box?” I asked my participant. “That’s when we read the text.” To be sure, with the children, either my wife or I did cover a daily text, my wife more so than me. My work schedule was squirrelly back in the day. But I always downplayed it.

I even implied a certain derision of the text with John Wheatandweeds, who (in the Tom Irregardless and Me review of Ivor E Tower), “hinders members from their door to door ministry by spending inordinate amounts of time discussing the text of the day.” How well I remember old-timers rattling on about the text before field service. Sometimes they went on for so long that you didn’t feel like service any longer by the time they were done. Tom Irregardless and Me showcases a “battle” between Bethel and John Wheatandweeds to shorten up that morning discussion to seven minutes—a battle that eventually ended in a draw. He doesn’t get them out in seven minutes, but neither is it all day. And sometimes the time saved inside is squandered away in the parking lot.

So here I am years later in Zoom Covid days, days that nobody could have anticipated, and the congregation service groups launch into discussions of the daily text, and it has become a highlight of the day! It only took 50 years. Gasp! Have I become one of those old-timers?

That convention text discussion was the 2nd time I had been assigned a part. The prior year was my first, and I had been told to report at the chairman’s office where I would be escorted to the platform at the proper time. So for the second year, my participant and I hung out at the chairman’s office waiting for our escort. What I did not know was the prior year’s procedure was specific to that chairman’s organization.

“Shouldn’t I be escorted to the platform by now?” I asked at the desk as the opening song began to play. I got the fastest escort in theocratic history. The brother opening the program looked not too comfortable—his eyes scanning the crowd for his successor to show up. I have told the story in No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash.

I don’t know for sure, but I think it would not happen today. There is value in standardization.

....

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“It can’t be pleasing to Jehovah when we fixate on the negative,” was a theme of Anthony Morris’s talk Friday PM at the Regional Convention. It is a choice. An unconscious choice, maybe, and difficult to retrain—but it ought be the aim. The talk was entitled: Close Friendship With Jehovah Brings the Greatest Joy!

“All creation keeps on groaning,” he said, quoting Romans 8:22, but does that mean we should go into it full mode, too? Though the backdrop was unpleasant in Habakkuk’s time, he was set on rejoicing: “Although the fig tree may not blossom and there may be no fruit on the vines; although the olive crop may fail and the fields may produce no food; Although the flock may disappear from the pen, and there may be no cattle in the stalls; Yet, as for me, I will exult in Jehovah;I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.” he said. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

Instead, practice being like Jesus in as many ways as possible, was the thrust of the talk. Practice giving and people will give to you—stingy people are never happy—stop judging and you will no means be judged. He didn’t say “Don’t start judging,” but “stop judging,” because they already were. It made me think of how the same speaker had handled the counsel of Jesus at Matthew 6:25: “Stop being anxious about your lives as to what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your bodies as to what you will wear,” and in this case reiterated it as though one might a child: “Just, stop it!” planting the idea that it was not uncontrollable. He didn’t say, “Don’t be anxious,” as though they weren’t already. He said “Stop being anxious,” conceding that they were.

Other points touched on in that talk: Don’t be envious of others, don’t begrudge someone’s material prosperity, because “jeolousy is rottenness to the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30) Brother Morris has a way of murmuring through his own talks, appearing to reason it out as he goes, so that no one in a thousand years would accuse him of “speechmaking.”

And what to make of 1 Peter 4:15? “Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer or a busybody in other people’s matters.” Most people would rate murderer as super-serious, thief somewhat less so, and busybody so far down the scale as to hardly register, yet Peter mentioned them all in the same breath.

Don’t be a busybody, was his admonition, and being a busybody usually stems from being dissatisfied in one’s own life. “All the days of the aflicted ones are bad”—Morris quoted Proverbs 15:15, so try to dwell on the second half of the verse: “But the one with a cheerful heart has a continual feast,” and strive hard to squeeze out the “poor me” attitude, needlessly focusing on the afflictions. Agonizing over problems that are beyond our control cannot be pleasing to God, instead, try to focus on the more productive things—things that we can do.

It occurred to me afterwards that this year we are not really calling it a ‘Regional Convention.’ With the entire convention moved online due to Covid-19, the “region” it covers is pretty big. This is it is just the “2020 Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses” with the theme “Always Rejoice,” which can be streamed from the jw.org website.